Sorley flipped quickly through his memories. “I went to a Beethoven recital in Prague once,” he said doubtfully. “It could have been then.”
“It was! I knew you would remember.” Now Cormack looked pleased. “You see? Fate.”
Sorley bit down the retort on his lips. “And the second time?”
“London. 1879. You were on one side of the river, I on the other. I was so shocked I saw you again, I figured it was a case of mistaken identity and let you get away from me again. I yearned for your youthful beauty.” His lip curled. “Naturally at that point I had no idea what a sinful man you were, or would become.”
Sorley blinked. Sinful? Cormack was so hung up on this point. Who knew what he actually meant by it? He ignored it to ask if Cormack had been searching for him since London.
Cormack flung him an incredulous look. “Well,obviously.I realised we were destined to be together. But when you spoke to me, I knew I could no longer wait for you to come to me.”
“And that was when?”
“At the canal side, in Garstang.” Sorley gave him a blank look he didn’t have to fake.The fuck is Garstang?“At the public house there. You gave me such a heated stare, and said, I remember it exactly, ‘Not here, man’. But as soon as I returned your look — which was all sexual promise, obviously, you disappeared, while the damnably incompetent barmaid messed up taking my payment.” He grimaced. “I couldn’t chance leaving a bank card.”
“And I vanished into the night again?”
The scowl intensified. “I knew you were mine as soon as you spoke. I gave chase, but you were determined to play coy, leading me a merry dance across the town. You finally gave me the slip somewhere in the vicinity of an industrial area.” His wrinkled nose showed his disdain at having lost his prey. “I didn’t understand at first how you were so fast, but it made a lot more sense when I realised it had been you all along, and that you were like me.”
“I’m nothing like you!” Sorley’s denial came out hot and hard. Their meeting, such as it had been, was coming back to him. “I might be a vampire, but I have standards. Yes, humans are slow and mess up a lot, but they’rehuman. That’s what they do. That’s what we did before we were turned. And I do remember you now. That stare of ‘heated passion’? It was disgust. You were loud and obnoxious towards everyone working in that pub. Which goes against everything the Council recommends, for starters. You weren’t exactly being subtle or blending in. I’d gone for a quiet drink in the hope of picking up someone to feed from. Your big mouth ruined my night. You might be pretty, but you’re a gobshite and your soul is a fucking black hole.”
Sorley had been mortified on behalf of vamps everywhere. On behalf ofmeneverywhere. Cormack was objectively gorgeous to look at, but he was the worst kind of self-aggrandising legend-in-his-own-lunch-hour prick that could make even digested blood curdle at a hundred paces. The fact he was ten times worse than past Sorley had imagined made him an interminable villain.
Cormack bared his fangs again. This time his green eyes were chips of dirty ice in his handsome face. “You have the manners of a common guttersnipe. You need to be taught a lesson.” He lunged.
Sorley dodged to one side and darted into the alley. There were still people about, and he really didn’t want to explain an on-street supernatural fracas to the human police, or the Council, and definitely not to Dalziel.
“Oh aye, and what do you have in mind? Poisoning me wasn’t enough? What the hell did you expect to achieve with your little stunt anyway?”
“I thought,” Cormack lunged again, missing Sorley by a whisker, “to teach you a lesson for being so bloody rude and walking out on me.” They circled each other tentatively, a foot at a time, slipping further into the dank gloom of the narrow passageway, neither letting down their guard for a second.
“So you couldn’t have, I don’t know, fucking triedtalkingto me? Like a mature person instead of a sulky teenager with a hard-on and a grudge?” He was aware how hypocritical he sounded to anyone who knew him, but fuck it; Sorley might occasionally sulk like a champion when things didn’t go his way, but he’d never drugged and raped anyone under the delusion that it was the approved response to being snubbed.
“You ran away from me!” Cormack shrieked.
“I had no idea who you were, you numbskull. Of course I ran! I’m a vampire. I don’t take chances when random strangers start chasing me.”
“But it wasme.”
Oh heaven help him, this one wasn’t sane.
Trying not to roll his eyes, Sorley counted to ten. “Cormack, I—”
“I told you to call me Connor.”
He hadn’t, but there was no point antagonising him needlessly. “Connor then. I’m not running now. What do you want?”
Cormack’s eyes narrowed. “Is this a trick? It’s a trick, isn’t it? I’ve seen you with that hulking muscle-bound brute. And the others. You’re running quite a harem, aren’t you, Saul? Are you amenable to leaving them all behind and coming with me like you should have done weeks ago, or will I have to hurt you again?”
Sorley narrowly avoided biting down on his broken tooth at the casual way Gethin got a mention. Instead of replying with the first thing that popped into his head, he calmly asked, “Harem?”Just keep him talking. The others will find me soon.
Cormack’s expression darkened. “Yes, you…you spawn of Satan. What else would you call it? How many men do you need to be satisfied?” He darted forward. Sorley leapt up onto a refuse bin to avoid him.
“I’m not fucking anyone but—” He broke off sharply. “You know what? It’s none of your damn business who I sleep with, or don’t. Who are you anyway, the morality police?” There was a line of bins, then the space opened out, a couple of cars parked against one wall, then a zigzag run through to the other end of the alley. Not ideal, but workable with.Where the hell are the others?He knew they wouldn’t have abandoned him, but they were doing rather too well at keeping downwind; he couldn’t scent anything except for the rank stink of the bins and the snarling mess of a vampire he needed terminated.
Sorley jumped onto the next bin. Cormack mirrored his sideways shift on the ground, and again, and again until he was out of bins and would lose his height advantage with his next step. He thought quickly.
“When you say ‘hurt me again’, what do you mean? We both know I’ll heal, so what, you want me to suffer before I agree to become yours and yours alone? Or do you have another plan?”That’s right, give him ideas, you daft sod.
